Mindfulness and Asperger's
I want to write about Asperger Syndrome. Our adult son has lived (and struggled) with it his whole life. More is being understood about Asperger's now, and more people have a sense of what it means to have Asperger's.
Asperger's is the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum. One should remember that autism comprises a spectrum. As the saying goes, If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. The syndrome manifests in different ways in different people.
General aspects of Asperger's—please keep the preceding sentence in mind—include difficulty reading social situations, a need for order, a focus on details rather than the big picture, a tendency toward sensory overload, and challenges starting, organizing, prioritizing, and completing projects. Those with Asperger's often show great verbal skills, creativity, attention to detail, and general ingenuity. You can see how people with these polar extremes can be hard for so-called neuro-typicals to understand.
Or maybe you can't.
Judgments can impede. Someone with Asperger's may miss such social clues as facial expressions, vocal intonation, body language, thereby appearing rude or awkward. Patience and a willingness to withhold categorical judgments can help you understand and interact with someone with Asperger's. These qualities can help you understand and interact with anyone.
That's mindfulness. Observe the person. Hear with your ears, see with your eyes. For you, the noise of a crowded supermarket makes little dent on your attention. For some within the autism range, a noisy supermarket represents utter and painful sensory overload.
People with Asperger's often have trouble with their executive function. Executive function has been likened to a secretary who lays out the executive's duties for the day: correspondence to read and reply to, decisions to make, meetings to attend, golden parachutes to create, whatever the hell other things executives do.
With weak executive function, schedules go awry, plans crumble, and things generally go kerflooie. What the world sees in such a person: laziness and carelessness. Such a view completely miscontrues the energy,, passion, and creativity that people with Asperger's can assail a project with when properly harnessed.
That harnessing requires mindfulness. I do not know how well some people with Asperger's can meditate. Sitting may prove too formless for the distractions for their skittering minds. That's my guess, and I know I have a lot of the symptoms of Asperger's (I have not been so diagnosed). Still, a mindful understanding of oneself and a conscious effort to understand others can help.
For instance, many aspies avoid eye contact, finding it distracting (I do myself). Our son has taken the route of looking at the other person's nose or mouth. This distracts him less than looking at the eyes, and reassures his conversant that he's paying attention. This is one tactic that helps him get along.
I used to reply to casual greetings like How are you? with a flat Fine. I knew they weren't looking to hear about blisters on my foot or the Cheez-its I just ate. Only recently have I begun to reply with something like, I am well. How are you? Rather than brush the person off, I acknowledge the social construct. Some people move easily within the social construct. Aspies have to rehearse their lines.
There's the challenge. Aspies have to learn to recognize social situations and develop tactics that help them thru these situations. They have to be especially conscious, or be condemned to social awkwardness. Should social awkwardness be so crucifying? Aspies are prepared to be loners, in retaliation of otherness. We would do well just to see them as they are, just as neuro-typicals are: trying to make sense of the burbling world.
LINK
This link provides a fuller description of autism and Asperger's.
Note on top picture: A sculpture at Brook Farm in Harvard, Massachusetts. I think ofthe aspies I have met as giants in some ways, and awkward.